The exchange was among many internet chats prosecutors offered to support charges that Mr Valle conspired with others online to kidnap, rape, kill and eat women he knew.

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No women were injured and defence lawyers have argued he was merely fantasising with no intent to harm.

For two days Mr Walsh has testified about chats Mr Valle had last year with a New Jersey co-defendant and two alleged co-conspirators: a man in Britain and Mr Khan.

Mr Valle wrote that he could talk the woman he would marry in a few months into going on a trip to India before they took her to Pakistan, where they could gag her and take her to a basement, where they could hang her from her feet and take turns sexually assaulting her before slitting her throat and cooking her.

''I just love the thought of stringing her upside down,'' Mr Valle wrote in an email shown to the jury. He also said he would like ''to see her suffer'' and ''slowly roast her until she dies''.

The defence lawyer Robert Baum attacked Mr Walsh's statement that 40 of the thousands of internet communications of Mr Valle contained ''elements of real crimes''.

Mr Baum was aiming to show little or no distinction existed between chats or emails the FBI deemed real evidence of a crime and those dismissed as fantasy.